Saturday, February 16, 2013

Small Town vs. Big City: The Snark Factor

On Monday, January 13, 1913, an unassuming entry appeared in
the San Jose Evening News:

A suit for divorce has
been filed by Ella Bean against Leon S. Bean. The charges are cruelty. S. W.
Williard is the attorney for Mrs. Bean.

One hundred years ago, that type of news report was
certainly less common than it is today. In the case of Leon and Ella Bean, it
would mean a family upheaval for their twin boys, who were still sixteen years
of age—and possibly for their older sister, Leona, as well, though she had by
then attained the age of majority and would shortly be a married woman,
herself.

San Jose, the county seat for
Santa Clara County, would of course be the newspaper
of record for local court proceedings, and their city paper’s demure
announcement was to be expected in such matters.

What was a
surprise was the report subsequently found in another city’s newspaper just one
week later. While I have no idea what the size of nearby San Francisco might have been one hundred
years ago, it surely represented one of the sizeable cities of our country even
at that point. Yet, the tone of the reporting could be taken for the style of a
small town gossip column in the detail it provided.

Picture the setting of a breakfast nook in a Victorian-style
home in a fashionable Bay Area neighborhood as you read what the San Francisco Call saw fit to print on January 31,
1913:

PALO ALTO, Jan.
30.—Mrs. Ella Bean, who, as Ella Shields of Redwood City, furnished San Mateo
county with a topic for gossip a quarter of a century ago by her romantic
elopement to Fresno with Leon S. Bean, a young contractor, has brought suit for
divorce in the San Jose courts this week, charging extreme cruelty.

For some time rumors have been
prevalent that an estrangement existed, but as both husband and wife have
continued to live at the family home no hint was given of the probability of a
divorce.

Despite the secrecy maintained by
both the complainant and her husband, it is known that Mrs. Bean charges her
better half with sudden outbursts of temper. Recently, she says, he hurled a
cup at her head and the flying missile struck her above the eyes, inflicting a
deep cut. She exhibits a bandaged forehead as evidence. Bean declares that he
threw the cup only after his wife had poured hot water over him.

Bean has been engaged in the
contracting business in Palo Alto
for eight years, and is said to have amassed a considerable fortune.

While I’m not entirely sure of the accuracy of all the
details divulged in the newspaper’s breathless report, the story does open my
mind up to some additional possibilities. For one thing, remember that Leon and
Ella had twin boys. With a few glimpses here of the twins in their younger
days, the couple fleeting reports of twin Samuel’s blind-and-deaf condition need
to be revisited.

Sam wasn’t always that way. He wasn’t born blind and deaf.
In fact, for most of his childhood, he and his brother carried on with the
usual antics one would expect of lively twins. Family oral reports had one of
two traditionally-recited causes for Sam’s handicap. One story was that he
sustained injuries from a softball game, when a ball caught him in the eye, and a resulting infection spread to his ears.

The other story? That Sam was in a
rock fight.

I don’t know which one was the correct rendering of the
incident. But I do know that it was reported to have happened either when he
was twelve, or when he was sixteen.

Either way, any injury that inflicts such a drastic impact
on the life of a child is ripe to also become the cause of the unraveling of a
marriage.

Now, seeing how snarky the report from a city newspaper like
the San Francisco Call could have
been, and wondering what the ripple effect might have been on the couple’s
children, I see the perfect alignment of the age (sixteen) and the instigation
(anger or embarrassment over one’s parents being the focus of a nasty
journalistic smear, even in a small town like Palo Alto).

With two strong willed people, I can only imagine what that scene was like, Magda. On the other hand, it could have been a simple argument that got out of hand--and then aired for the entire community to see, thanks to some overzealous rumor mongers. I just had a hard time believing it was a city newspaper that ran that story, and sometimes wonder if some green-eyed motivations were behind its publication.

However, as for domestic violence, you are certainly right: that is something that needs to be faced squarely and not swept away and ignored. I've heard far too many stories from both my line of work and my husband's. Thankfully, there are so many professionals addressing the issue in our times, providing help and raising community awareness.

Oh, poor Sam! What a tragedy. And it's very sad about Ella and Leon's marriage fell apart too. Wow, it must have been extremely embarrassing to have their private troubles out there in the papers for all to read.

I just wanted to let you know that this post and your "Postcript on a Divorce" post are listed in today's Fab Finds post at http://janasgenealogyandfamilyhistory.blogspot.com/2013/02/follow-fridayfab-finds-for-february-22.html.

About Me

It is my contention that, after a lifetime, one of the greatest needs people have is to be remembered. They want to know: have I made a difference?
I write because I can't keep for myself the gifts others have entrusted to me. Through what I've already been given--though not forgetting those to whom I must pass this along--from family I receive my heritage; through family I leave a legacy. With family I weave a tapestry. These are my strands.